We've had 1,235 votes so far (but we'll leave the poll open until 31 December). Here, in order of popularity, are the results at this stage:

1. Online Video / Internet TV 27% (337 votes)

2. Continued rise of browser-based apps (Ajax, Google, etc) 22% (275 votes)

3. Mobile Web 15% (185 votes)

4. RSS and structured data 12% (153 votes)

5. Rich Internet Apps (Apollo, WPF, etc) 9% (116 votes)

6. Web Office / Enterprise web apps 6% (77 votes)

7. Semantic Web 6% (75 votes)

8. Other (please comment) 1% (17 votes)

Given the impact YouTube had on 2006, it is not that surprising that Online Video / Internet TV is considered most likely to be the biggest Web trend of 2007. Google of course has prime position in this space now, after snapping up YouTube near the end of 2006. Perhaps of most interest is what the big media, TV and movie companies do next year - so far it's been a series of tentative deals between YouTube and big media, but 2007 may be the year that big media build (or buy) their own online video solutions. Watch this space...

Mobile Web has been predicted for many years - and R/WW readers don't seem overly optimistic about 2007 being the year. 2008 anyone?

Some good support for RSS and structured data doing well in '07, while Web Office and Semantic Web drew some votes. I expected more enthusiasm for Semantic Web, but perhaps it's still too amorphous a concept for most people at this point.

As for my pick for biggest Web trend in 2007, I agree with the majority that next year will be remembered mostly for Online Video. I'm expecting fireworks from big Internet companies (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo), big media (News Corp, the US tv networks, Hollywood, etc), as well as small brave startups like Brightcove and Gotuit.

For a slightly left field trend, in 2007 I'm hoping for improvements in the technology behind browser-based apps. Ajax is still too unreliable and prone to downtime or slow browsing - and I'm not just saying that because I'm stuck on dial-up during the holiday period (although it has rendered Gmail non-functional for me!). I just think that Ajax needs a '2.0' of its own, to make it more competitive with the impressive range of RIA technologies we're seeing now (Adobe's Apollo, Microsoft's WPF, OpenLaszlo). Small companies like Morfik are working on enhanced browser-based functionality, so R/WW will begin to investigate that more in the new year - suggestions on other companies doing things to improve Ajax, are most welcome in the comments.

Happy New Year everyone - R/WW has been lightly posting this week, but we'll be back into it after the new year celebrations.

But honestly, you really should be reading a good book instead of blogs at this time of year ;-) I know I am!

10. Netscape Community Backlash; 1 July

When Netscape.com got re-branded into a Digg-style community news site, there was a lot of backlash within the Netscape community about it. This post tracked the upheaval - it was the most commented post on R/WW this year, with over 200 mostly negative comments before we closed it off.

9. 2007 Web Predictions; 19 December

The R/WW team pondered what web technology trends will be important over 2007.

8. List of Web 2.0 Lists; 5 May

A list of all the main web 2.0 lists - and other helpful web product data.

7. Yahoo! Mail Beta Release - Exclusive Podcast With Ethan Diamond; 13 September

In September Yahoo released the new Ajax-powered version of Yahoo Mail to all users in the US and across 18 international markets. We spoke exclusively to Ethan Diamond, director of product management for the new Yahoo! Mail.

6. New-look Google Reader Is Stunning!; 28 September

Late September Google Reader, Google's web-based RSS Aggregator, had a re-design which impressed R/WW's editor. With a look n' feel very much like Gmail, we believe it is a pointer to Google Reader being prepped for mainstream promotion - and/or merged with Gmail. Probably a bit of both, as a standalone RSS Reader is always going to be needed.

5. Exclusive: New Yahoo! homepage; 15 May

In May the world's most visited webpage, Yahoo.com, had a major re-design and Read/WriteWeb had the inside story. As well as the first in-depth look at the new yahoo.com, we had an exclusive podcast interview with Yahoo! Chief Product Officer Ash Patel and Vice President of Front Doors Tapan Bhat.

4. Firefox 2.0 Review; 17 October

Alex Iskold described Firefox 2.0 as "a solid release", noting that "the team's focus on performance, stability, usablity and security clearly results in a better, faster product - and users will be pleased with that."

3. Search 2.0 vs Traditional Search; 20 July

Ebrahim Ezzy's influential post defined search 2.0 as search technologies "designed to combine the scalability of existing internet search engines with new and improved relevancy models; they bring into the equation user preferences, collaboration, collective intelligence, a rich user experience, and many other specialized capabilities that make information more productive."

2. Top 10 Firefox Web 2.0 Add-ons; 29 August

Alex Iskold and I reviewed the best Firefox add-ons for Firefox 2.0. Firefox was consistently the most used browser for R/WW readers this year, ending the year at around 60% browser share for this site.

1. GoogleOS: What To Expect; 21 November

Emre Sokullu's number 1 smash hit not only became the biggest post of the year on Read/WriteWeb, but had us accused of smoking crack and all manner of other insults :-) But with over 100 comments, this post definitely stirred up a great discussion and deserved to be number 1 for 2006. Note: one of the comments was from my non-techie father, who normally does not comment on R/WW - but on this occasion he felt compelled to interrupt the Google navel-gazing with a Beatles joke.

So another great year on Read/WriteWeb - and you can see from this list of top posts how big a contribution the extended R/WW writing team made. Thanks Alex, Emre, Ebrahim, John, Rudy, and all the other super-smart guest writers R/WW has had over 2006. Here's looking to an even better 2007!

Best Web LittleCo

It was a very hard decision this year, for a few reasons. Firstly a number of the frontrunners for Best LittleCo ended up being acquired by the end of the year! This is probably the nature of the beast - if you're a successful Web LittleCo, then you'll attract the attention of BigCo suiters. This is exactly what happened to our 2004 picks, Ludicorp (creator of Flickr) and del.icio.us - both of which were snapped up by Yahoo in 2005. Having said that, 2005 LittleCo winner 37Signals is still independent and doing its own thing.

So to 2006 - which LittleCo's have most impressed? In our post asking that very question, the following web apps were popular with commenters: MyBlogLog (the social networking widget featured in the sidebar of R/WW and other blogs), Meebo (web-based IM), DigitalJournal.com (social news), 30Boxes (online calendar), Zoho (web office suite), Clipmarks (social bookmarking), Netvibes (start page). Those were the ones that were mentioned more than once.

If we had to make a shortlist (and we do, since this is a Best Of!), we think these small companies had a special impact in 2006... in no particular order: Netvibes, Digg, Meebo, Bebo, StumbleUpon. Those 5 all came of age in 2006 and each grew exponentially.

But there's one "LittleCo" we've deliberately left till last and which had an outstanding impact on 2006. This particular company got snapped up by Google before the year was out, so they don't count as a LittleCo any more. But for most of 2006 they built up a huge audience on their own and came to dominate the user-generated video space, lording it over much bigger competitors (Google itself, Microsoft, Yahoo and others). Of course, I am talking about YouTube!

YouTube is Read/WriteWeb's LittleCo of the year, for what they achieved as a tiny startup doing big things. Ironically they are now owned by this year's BigCo of the year, Google. 

Most Promising Web Company

With this category we're looking for companies that showed big promise in 2006, but will probably not reach their peak until 2007 or beyond. In 2004 we gave this honor to Feedburner, who at that time were right at the forefront of a new industry called feed management. Well, they've done alright for themselves haven't they... And in 2005, Memeorandum and Digg.com were our choices. Digg has come of age this year, although they still mainly appeal to a minority tech audience. TechMeme has expanded into new verticals, but like Digg there is room for more growth yet.

The following shortlist of Web companies/products stood out for us as having a lot of promise for 2007 and beyond: Sharpcast, Zoho, Zimbra, YouOS, MyBlogLog. Also there are some long bets we could make, like Hakia (semantic search) or BitTorrent, Inc (Bram Cohen's P2P company). 

The winner though is Sharpcast, because it is solving a big problem (syncing data across Web, desktop and other devices) and also is an integral part of many different trends that will be popular in 2007 and beyond - mobile, rich media, a world of multiple devices, and more. If Sharpcast can successfully roll out its Project Hummingbird in 2007 - which will sync all types of data - then it will be hitting a very sweet spot in the world of Internet-connected data.

Your Feedback

So what do you think - do you agree with our choices?

This is the third annual Best Web Companies round-up from Read/WriteWeb (see 2005 and 2004). This year we're spreading it out over 2 separate posts. In this post, we announce Best Bigco and the runners-up - with our special brand of analysis too. In our next post, we'll announce Best Web LittleCo of 2006 and the Most Promising Web Company/Innovator.

Google: influential and all-round impressive

We lead off with a somewhat predictable choice for Best Bigco of 2006. In the poll we ran to ask which Internet bigco most impressed you, 53% of respondents voted for Google. Despite this, for a while we were tempted to pick Amazon (which was second in our poll with 14% of the vote), due to its outstanding innovation. But when it came down to it, Google's influence and impact throughout 2006 has been second to none - so Google once again gets the Read/WriteWeb Bigco of the Year honor (it was also the first recipient, in 2004).

Overall though, Google's product range remains impressive. Their mainstays, search and Adsense/Adwords, grew even more dominant during 2006 (although both have threats looming against them in '07). Meanwhile Google's new products in 2006 displayed enough potential to make us think: well this company may not be a two-trick pony after all. Looking ahead to 2007, we have our eyes on their Web Office moves in particular, not to mention a possible OS!

Amazon: innovative, but not quite enough impact

In terms of sheer innovation, it's hard to argue against Amazon being the most innovative of the big Internet companies this year. They had unique web app releases that started in late 2005 (e.g. Mechanical Turk) and in 2006 rolled out a Web Services platform (Alexa web services, S3, EC2, and more). But in the end we had to question whether Amazon's innovation made a big enough impact on the mainstream market. After all, to be Best Web Bigco you need to be making a difference in the lives of normal people. Regarding their e-commerce platform, which certainly is mainstream, it was business as usual this year for Amazon - nothing spectacular in that department.

Apple, Yahoo and Microsoft: interesting...

What about the other bigcos: Apple had another impressive year and were rightly in the top 3 in the R/WW poll (13%, just behind Amazon). There's no doubt they are a stylish and innovative company - and if this were just about digital media, Apple would be hands-down winner of Best Web Bigco.

Last year's R/WW Bigco winner, Yahoo, had a mixed year. There were some great products and upgrades - a new-look Ajax homepage, Yahoo Mail, microformats galore, great use of APIs, Yahoo Go to span devices. But there were also questions... are they a technology company or a media company? Is it Flickr or Yahoo Photos? These issues came to a head in the now infamous peanut butter memo in November.

As for Microsoft, well they had a good year with the rollout of Windows Live and their next generation web/desktop development platform. There is a sense they're playing catch up (e.g. with Zune), but Microsoft showed in 2006 that they are a formidable competitor. And now with Ray Ozzie in charge of software innovation, they have a Web Native champion to push them forward. 2007 may well be Microsoft's year, so Google needs to be on its game!

Summary

So what do you think - do you agree with our choice of Google as Best BigCo? Well 53% of you said you did, so perhaps the better question is - do you agree with our reasoning? And what of the threats to Google in 2007... will it finally be the year Microsoft walks away with the coveted R/WW title of Best Web Bigco? ;-) Or will Amazon's web services innovations go mainstream? Perhaps Apple and digital media will be the next big thing - and don't count Yahoo out in that domain either.

But for now, it's Google's year!

To kick this series off, here is an overview of some high level trends from 2006. In our next post, we'll make predictions for 2007. We're also looking for YOUR feedback, to ensure that what we cover over the next few weeks is complete. 

I have to thank kiwi journalist Mark Evans for the inspiration for this series. Mark recently had an article published in Management Magazine that outlined Web trends for 2006 and 2007. Mark interviewed me for that article and so this post (and the next) will utilize much of the thinking I did to contribute to Mark's article. Here goes...

2006 Review

- Undoubtedly 2006 has been the year of the social network. MySpace, YouTube, Facebook have been the three outstanding success stories - but also impressive was Bebo (in the UK particularly) and there was strong growth in existing web 2.0 networks like Flickr and del.icio.us. The zenith of this social networking craze was probably Google buying YouTube for $1.65 B.

- RSS continues to inch towards the mainstream - Yahoo integrated it into Y! Mail Beta, Microsoft is utilizing it more (e.g. integrated into IE7), Google came out with Google Base and the GData format (which is based on the RSS variant, ATOM). While 2006 can't be seen as the breakthrough year for RSS in the mainstream, we will probably see RSS bloom in 2007 as a result of the groundwork done in '06 by the big Internet companies. Note that there have been recent murmurs that Yahoo is scaling back RSS, but I think this is a short-term trend only.

- In 2006 Amazon came out with some startling new web technologies - Mechanical Turk, S3 (online storage) and EC2. Their push to be a major web services infrastructure platform was one of the more intriguing strategies from an Internet bigco this year.

- On the other big companies... Google dominated the news and buzz this year, Microsoft pushed ahead with its Windows Live strategy (its Web-based suite of products and services), and Yahoo had a steady product year (but ending with organizational issues). Apple continued to dominate the online music market (forcing Microsoft to compete head-on) and has also entered the video space with gusto.

- Lots of bigco partnering. Allow me to quote directly from Mark Evans here, as he captured this trend very nicely: "Ebay and Yahoo have snuggled up together, announcing in May that Yahoo would serve display ads to Ebay’s US users and promote Paypal – Ebay’s payment service – to Yahoo users. In August, Ebay signed Google to serve ads to international Ebay users. A dollar each way, perhaps?"

- 2006 also saw the return of the VC money (see web 2.0 hype above!). Although VC money this time round seems to be much more circumspect and generally lower valuations than in the dot com boom. Indeed an associated trend is that web startups are increasingly going it alone and bootstrapping, thanks to open source technologies (e.g. the LAMP platform) and ability to work anywhere anytime. On the flip side (pardon the pun), it still pays to be located in Silicon Valley - as that is where the key networking and fundraising activity still takes place.

- Localization really matters in Web space - for example TradeMe dominates New Zealand traffic and similar local products often outrank the likes of Yahoo and Google in their local markets. The larger trend here is that cultural and language differences mean that big US companies don't always dominate in international markets. Having said that, there is also a lot of overseas cloning of successful Silicon Valley apps (e.g. digg, flickr). See Read/WriteWeb's continuing coverage of international markets for individual country drill-downs.

- The consumerization of the enterprise has been an emerging trend all year. More and more social web apps are coming into the enterprise (e.g. Skype, IM), and organizations are adopting read/write Web philosophies. Corporate blogging got popular in 2006 and blogs are usually part of the mix now in marketing plans. 

- In particular, I've been tracking the trend of Web Office. As well as lots of startup action (Zoho, Zimbra, ThinkFree, et al), late this year saw a flurry of action from Google in this space - Google Apps For Your Domain, the acquisitions of Writely and JotSpot, the launch of Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and more. In 2007 a major area of focus will be the increasing competition in office software between Google and Microsoft.

- Widgets (mini web apps) were all the rage this year, culminating in its own conference. Related to this, 'personalized start pages' (live.com, netvibes, pageflakes, etc) ramped up, enabling users to collect their widgets together on the one site.

- Online video was hot, hot, hot this year! There are currently a host of YouTube wannabes on the market. The best chance for success for all these startups vying for attention, is to either come out with a next-generation product that takes online video functionality to the next level and/or target a specific niche market.

- VoIP space showed signs of hotting up. Skype now has a bunch of new competitors, all aiming to disrupt the existing telecoms industry.

- Hybrid web/desktop apps (or as Read/WriteWeb termed it "webified desktop apps") came into play a lot more this year. For example the Times Reader, built using Microsoft WPF technology. Also noteworthy is Adobe's Apollo platform and Laszlo's rich internet apps platform.

- Browser Wars 2.0. Firefox enjoyed strong growth this year and released its 2.0 browser in October. 2006 was also (not coincidentally) the year that Microsoft finally upgraded its Internet Explorer browser, to 7.0.

- From a blog perspective, Techcrunch established itself as the blog at the center of all the web 2.0 action - attracting aspiring startups like moths around a flame. Other tech blogs like Gigaom, VentureBeat and Read/WriteWeb itself, have also experienced excellent growth this year.

- Ajax had strong growth this year and according to some reports is not that far behind Flash now.

- World Internet Penetration is 16% and growing - Asia in particular is ramping up fast! Also noteworthy is that 3/4 of traffic to top websites is international.

Those were the major trends from the Web this year, but there are many other smaller trends. Here is a starter for 10:

• RSS filtering, while not as strong as I expected this year, is still making progress via very small startups. The new Google Reader also had some interesting filtering features. However PubSub carked it.
• The commodization of RSS Readers - e.g. the Pluck Reader shut down.
• P2P traffic continued to grow.
• The WebOS (virtual desktop) was a relatively small market this year, but a lot of startups entered the space.
• Digital Reading market hotted up - Microsoft, Sony and Adobe all released new e-reading products.
• Asian Mobile Web years ahead - while the Mobile Web has a long way to go in places like the US and NZ, in Asia the mobile Web had continued growth in 2006.
• e-learning had strong growth in 2006.
• There was hot competition between blog vendors - e.g. SixApart vs Wordpress
• Innovative distributed portal plays are growing fast - e.g. edgeio, simplyhired.
• ADD MORE IN THE COMMENTS...

As the final bullet point implies, so much more has happened in 2006 than I can hope to cover in one post. So please add other 2006 Web trends to the comments. After all, the only way this list is going to be comprehensive is via the Power of the Many ;-)